iPad 3 rumors suggest thicker casing, massive graphics, no quad-core

And queue the supposed case-leaks for the iPad 3, one of the traditional sings of impending Apple-pocalypse that every new device, real and imagined, has to go through before it gets announced, much less launched. These particular cases, when compared to an iPad 2 cases, seems to show some small, subtle differences between the two, as highlighted in the images above. We've also got some more rumors on both graphics power and chipset power -- or lack thereof.

First up, that supposed iPad 3 case, picture above. Here's what they have to say:

You can see here that the mounts for the logic board are very different, which means the logic board shape will be different allowing for . . . .

More battery. The width of where the logic board sits on the iPad 2 appears much larger than that of the i.Pad 3. We have long heard that the iPad 3 was going to provide longer battery life, and this back housing seems to support that.

The camera is different. It is hard to make a judgment just by looking at the casing, but what we can expect is a different camera on the iPad 3 than what we had on the 2.

LCD will be different than what we have had before. Whether or not it will be the super screen we have seen reported will have to wait. But the different mounting does mean that the LCD has been redesigned at the very least.

We've heard nothing but conflicting rumors about this, some saying it's slightly thicker either to make extra room for LTE and more battery power, or to properly light that big 2048x1536 Retina display screen. Others say it's the same thickness as the iPad 2, no difference at all.

The Verge is also weighing in on the iPad 3, saying it will be powered by upcoming Apple's A6 chipset but that the A6 chipset would not be quad-core as previously rumored.

Instead, the iPad 3 will supposedly remain a dual-core device with a more powerful GPU inside. Given Apple's tight control of both hardware and software, they've often been able to do more with less than other platforms, like Android, where the same software has to run on many different types of hardware. If Apple chooses to optimize for something specific, everything gets optimized for it. That's part of the reason iOS devices, despite typically having less RAM and clock speed than competing Android devices, were still able t more than keep up and offer a smooth user experience. Don't get us wrong, we'd love a couple gigs of RAM and a quad core, but Apple may not think it's needed.

Next up →

Reader comments

iPad 3 rumors suggest thicker casing, massive graphics, no quad-core

If lte and a retina display are included a bigger battery will be needed just to get the same amount of battery life available on the ipad 2. Since Apple is so far ahead in the tablet space they can afford to be conservative on the specs while concentrating on the user experience. If Apples competition keeps advertising cores and gigahertz without providing a different use case or better experience the market will continue to be an ipad market.

Friggin exclelent,Extreme to the hilt with this one Doug,Never thought you would risk your main device,oh wait it was a 3gs,cool even better and the phone still work's,Wait . you going to shoot it as well,ha ha awesome,I used one of those age's ago on my 3gs,Think i need to get me another for my iPhone 4,Thank's for a great video Doug

The quad core stuff is kind of silly at this point in the game. Take Android for example, a lot of its software still hasn't been optimized for dual core. Or hardware acceleration. A big GPU boost and some updated, energy saving architecture on the chip will be amazing in iPad 3 of that is what happens. I do hope to see the RAM bumped to a full gig though.

Apple is looking way down the road. Siri gets most of of its computing heavy lifting done in iCloud. In the server farm in North Carolina. That lets Apple build iOS devices with less memory and processing power than legacy laptops and desktops. Really big computational tasks (natural language recognition, internet searches, Wolfram Alpha calculations) have never been done directly on mobile devices, and probably never will be.
So why does Apple need to put massive quad-core computing power in their iOS devices? Turns out they probably don't. Especially after post-LTE high speed wireless data becomes pervasive and reliable. (The quad-core A6 just might find its way into the MacBook Air, because of the many advantages it would bring, but that's another story...)

Its such as you learn my mind! You appear to grasp a lot approximately this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I believe that you just could do with a few percent to power the message home a bit, but instead of that, that is excellent blog. An excellent read. I'll certainly be back.